At the Ballet

Several years ago, I was reading an article on the essentials of a gentlemen’s wardrobe in one those fatuous men’s fashion magazines (“Do you want a six pack and luscious hair?” they ask, as if the answer could ever possibly be “Why no, Editor, I want a receding hairline and sagging man tits – why do you ask?”). In it they said every man after the age of twenty should own a well-made suit. I looked at my closet and realised that I didn’t have one of those. I had one ill-fitting off-the-rack discount horror that I wore whenever I needed to, and because I believed my limbs were too unwieldy for suits, I had never bought another.

Then I was recommended a tailor in Lahore who comes to your house and makes three-piece suits for you and I got addicted. I bought all the suits – blue suits, black suits, raw silk suits, grey suits, dark suits, light suits. All the suits. This would ordinarily be an investment in one’s future, but since I don’t need to wear suits for work, ever, I find myself with a bit of a hoarder’s problem. Even my tailor asked me what was wrong with me. So when I get an occasion to wear anything even orbiting the realm of formality, I tend to get carried away.

This is how I came to be at the opera theatre dressed in a three-piece formfitting light wool suit on a hot, muggy Saturday evening, while everyone else around me was wearing linen shirts and (in the case of one atrocity) cargo shorts.

Nowhere else can an arm seem so still, a leg appear so long, a body float so light

I had tickets to go and see Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet, an adaptation of a Russian fairy tale about maidens, princes, sorcerers and, unsurprisingly, birds. Dressed as I was, I spent most of my time hoping I didn’t have visible sweat stains whilst fanning myself with the evening’s programme. But it’s impossible to ignore the ballet. Nowhere else can an arm seem so still, a leg appear so long, a body float so light. I was sitting in a box close to the stage but with a partial view of the flanks. There I could make out the darkened form of dancers waiting to jump into the light of the main stage, and my mind drifted to Katerina.

I first met Katerina in New York at a Thanksgiving meal in 2006. I was at my friend Reed’s apartment where a motley group of us who had not gone back home for the holidays had gathered to eat and be merry. Reed was at school with me and studying politics, but was singular in that he had been a professional ballet dancer until the age of 22 and then retired to go back to college. Katerina was his friend from his former dance company, and still danced professionally on the world’s best stages. She was devastatingly beautiful, and had a poise you’d think impossible – were it not serving you mash potatoes across the table. You can always tell a ballet dancer from a distance because their bodies do not move like the rest of us. Reed and Katerina always sat ramrod straight, their limbs inevitably positioned perfectly, their long necks taught. They existed with a permanent graceful ease that came from being trained from the age of five. They would smile shyly when I brought this to their attention, because of course nothing about their training was easy. Years of a grueling life of exercises, movements, stamina and extreme commitment. No different to that of any professional level athlete I suppose.

Reed had retired and never looked back, but Katerina never wanted to be anything but a ballerina. In a world where every little girl wishes for it at least once in her life, it was almost unreal to meet one who had actually done it. I studied her as one would a mythological creature. What did she eat? What did she think about? How did she live? What was she?

We became fast friends, I think mainly because I knew all the dance movies we had both grown up watching as children. She would get me discount tickets to her performances and I would eagerly go to see her dancing in the chorus, enthralled by the beauty of it all. Later we would all go out, but she would only stay about 30 minutes because she had to go and ice her feet lest she injure herself for tomorrow’s performance. One day Katerina announced that the company was putting up a much-hyped production of the Romeo and Juliet ballet, and that she would be playing Juliet. But not just that. After the production she would be elevated to principal dancer! This was it, this was the dream of dreams, and it was hers. We promised to be there for the opening night and she retreated into months of lengthy rehearsals.

I would keep tabs on her through Reed from time to time, excited at the prospect of seeing her on stage. But two days before opening night, the unthinkable happened. During dress rehearsals, Katerina jumped into the air and landed at the wrong angle, instantly snapping her ankle. Reed said she lay on the stage howling for a full five minutes, clutching her shattered joint before she let anyone touch even her. Later I realised that it wasn’t just that she knew she had lost her big break as Juliet, but also that a part of her knew for certain in that awful, infinitesimal second, that she would never dance professionally again.

And she didn’t. Katerina left New York after her injury, and went back home to her parents in the Mid-west to heal – though how does one heal from a shattered dream? Reed said she couldn’t bear to see the posters of the ballet posted around the city, and rarely came back to people from her old life. We lost touch over the years, but I heard recently that she was married and happy and worked as editor of a fashion magazine now.

And as I saw these young people, each the product of unshakeable hope and indescribable commitment, all dancing on a knife’s edge, I thought of Katerina and the lessons that her appearance in my life taught me. Of the value of working on your craft, of discipline, of hope, of how terribly unfair life can be, and how even when it’s all taken away from you, you can still put yourself back together. Gracefully.

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